![]() Pauly is still hanging around, too, and every scene he shares with Rocky shows a deep love, but one buried under three decades of swallowed feelings and barely tolerated ball-busting that the recent crop of on-screen bromances could only hope to grow in to.īy far, though, the most important relationship in Rocky Balboa is the fractured bond Rocky struggles to repair with a son more embarrassed than proud of his has-been dad’s history. Nope, Rocky’s memories are of life before he was a champion and he’s holding on tight to the people who were with him when he was just another bum from the neighborhood. There’s a perfectly painted, paternally (and thankfully) platonic relationship between Rocky and “Little Marie,” the girl he befriended back in the day who’s now a single mom working nights at the bar. But those aren’t memories of Drago, Clubber Lang, or James Brown’s resplendent blue blazer. All he’s got left is an Italian restaurant, some old boxing stories to entertain the diners, and memories he can’t stop wallowing in. He’s lost his fame, his fortune, and his beloved Adrian (to “woman cancer” - one subtle example of how beautifully Stallone crafts Rocky’s character through his words). The relationships between the characters are the core of the filmīut here’s what requires absolutely no suspension of disbelief: The relationships between the characters, old and young, that are the core of the film. By 2006, Rocky is living alone in the same Philly neighborhood he fought his way out of in 1976. ROCKY BALBOA SPEECH ANALYSIS FULLOk, we’ll buy that. We’re also buying Rocky’s plea to the boxing commission to reconsider their initial rejection of his boxing license, which moved us enough to believe it would have also moved a room full of old men not ready to retire their own hopes and dreams. Besides, Stallone says he’s consulted with medical specialists who’ve confirmed that many athletes with the type of brain injury referenced in Rocky V were, in fact, able to recover and compete professionally. In the grand scheme of what movies ask us to check at the door, those are pretty minor concessions. To be fair, Rocky Balboa does ask for two suspensions of disbelief: First, you must forget the extent of the brain damage referenced in Rocky V, and second, you’ve got to believe the boxing commission would allow a man of Rocky’s age-no matter how startlingly fit he appears-to compete in a sanctioned fight. News of Rocky Balboa was met with enough simultaneous eye-rolls to reverse the Earth’s rotation ROCKY BALBOA SPEECH ANALYSIS MOVIEAnd he did it so well that the seemingly preposterous premise of an AARP-aged boxer going up against the Heavyweight Champ actually comes off as the most human, the most relatable, and the most real Rocky movie since the Oscar-winning original. In doing so, Stallone took himself and the icon he created back to their roots. There was no way any of us could conceive of a new Rocky movie that would be in any way plausible, let alone enjoyable beyond ironic spectacle. But Stallone did something nobody predicted: He took a character that defined Hollywood’s blockbuster franchise mentality and dropped him in something like an independent art film. Sly was mocked as, at best, living in the ’80s and, at worst, being completely delusional. When news broke that Stallone was dragging his (then) 60-year-old self back in to the ring for one more round, it was met with enough simultaneous eye-rolls to reverse the Earth’s rotation. Like Rocky himself, 2006’s Rocky Balboa was a true underdog. ![]()
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